Optimization and development of groundwater-level monitoring network in Eshtehard plain

In groundwater resources management, continuous monitoring of wells discharge and charge and groundwater quantitative and qualitative variations are very important. Groundwater monitoring network could provide information on quantitative and qualitative variations in groundwater situations. Hence it would be used to predict the behavior of the aquifer in the future. This study describes an optimizing method to design the optimum groundwater-level monitoring network in aquifer of Eshtehard. Two scenarios were considered to optimize the locations of the observation wells: (1) exploring optimal locations of existing observation wells and (2) adding optimal observation wells to existing well network. Kriging method was utilized to estimate groundwater-level for preparing the database. Optimization of groundwater monitoring network with two objectives (1) minimizing root mean square error and (2) minimizing number of wells, was implemented by non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). The results show that by using this method it is possible to remove redundant wells in a monitoring network or to add new wells in case of shortage of observation wells in a network having acceptable accuracy.